PopCap On Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare

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Plants vs Zombies is boldly going where no popular gaming franchise has gone before: to a land of over-the-shoulder camera angles and gleefully bobbing crosshairs, whereupon things will be shot mercilessly. OK, maybe it’s not the boldest move ever in the grand scheme of things, but Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare is quite a departure for PopCap’s vegetable stew of a tower porch defender, and it’s looking admirably silly. But so far, all we’ve seen is a quick bit of co-op. What about large-scale (24-ish player) competitive multiplayer and the ability to play as zombies? Also, stepping back a bit, why make a shooter out of Plants vs Zombies at all? I spoke with creative director Justin Wiebe to find out. RPS: Why did you decide to do this with Plants vs Zombies, of all series?

Wiebe: We really wanted to grow the franchise. We knew it could be more than a 2D tower defense game, but we weren’t sure. So we had a team say, “You know what? Let’s try something different. Let’s just go for it. And if it doesn’t work out, that’s fine.” Because if it’s not fun, we’re not gonna release it. But we worked on the demo for a while and it turned out that this thing was just awesome.

But we knew we couldn’t just tell everyone, “Hey, we’re making this really cool PvZ action-multiplayer game,” because it sounds crazy, right? It shouldn’t work. So we knew we had to show them, not tell them. So we had to keep it secret for two years.

Wiebe: We explored different genres. We knew we wanted to build an action game that allowed players to play in the fight between the plants and zombies. That felt like the right way to go because it’d let the series evolve. We explored different design ideas. We put a bunch of possibilities together, like maybe an open-world game or a straight-up single-player action game. But at the end of the day, we kept coming back to multiplayer. Multiplayer brings that random fun element to it – the ability to play with friends or strangers. It just worked for us.

RPS: We’ve seen one level, but how much variety are we looking at? What sorts of map sizes and objectives?

Wiebe: This is truthfully our very first reveal to the world. This is our four-player co-op map. It’s also the first game mode we’re unveiling. But when we started off, this was actually billed as a very competitive multiplayer game. So we’ve got a lot more details that we’re gonna be unveiling over time. So essentially, this is just the tip of the iceberg for us. But you can imagine if we head toward a 24-player competitive Plants vs Zombies experience… just let your imagination run with it.

RPS: So naturally, there will also be modes where one side plays plants and the other plays zombies, right? I mean, it is called Plants vs Zombies, after all.

Wiebe: Exactly.

RPS: Will players mainly be controlling the big boss zombies, then?

Wiebe: That’s interesting. It remains to be seen.

What we’ve done is we’ve worked very hard with our team. We’re very passionate PvZ players, and we went through all the characters trying to nail down what are the four core plant classes that we wanted to have. Which characters fit those classes. And it’s the same way for the zombies. It’s very difficult to whittle it down to what are going to be the essential core of your multiplayer experience.

RPS: How many original PvZ members are also working on Garden Warfare? I mean, I don’t imagine many of them came with a working knowledge of Frostbite 3.

Wiebe: We actually assembled a team of Frostbite veterans. People who’d been working in the engine for years. People with experience in shooters and other action genres. And that experience basically allowed us to have a playable version of our game up and running honestly within two weeks of starting development. We just went right for it because honestly we needed to create a demo and prove whether this was gonna be fun or not very, very quickly.

RPS: It all looks very tongue-in-cheek and self-aware, though. But, at the same time, I think a lot of people feel like you’re morphing PvZ into some seriousface rah-rah-rah shooter. Do you think that’s shooter fatigue talking? Are you worried about shooter fatigue?

Wiebe: Well, I think shooting is actually a core part of PvZ, right? I mean, you look at your Pea Shooter. You’ve got your cactus. There’s a lot of projectile-based characters within the core game. Basically, all we did is find the characters that made the most sense as projectile characters. But if you look at the Chomper, he’s not projectile-based. He’s more of a platformer kind of character. He just wants to run around and eat as many zombies as possible.

RPS: Well, sure. Things do technically shoot other things in PvZ, but that’s not the main verb of the game. In PvZ classic, you’re strategically arraying cheerful green things that do the shooting for you. Garden Warfare is actually about aiming and pulling the trigger. That action, that central goal. That’s what I mean.

Wiebe: Well, I think what we’re gearing it toward is fans of Plants vs Zombies first and foremost – and fans of the action genre. So if you take that, add some depth, and mix in some humor, this game is not gonna be positioned in a place where we would necessarily compete with the likes of Call of Duty or Battlefield. We want to be the game that players play when they want to relax from managing their KD ratio. Something where they can just sit down, enjoy the game, and laugh out loud.

RPS: Yeah, and humor’s obviously a pretty big thing here. The Call of Duty call-out at the start, especially, got some good laughs. But frankly, a lot of EA games seem to get a little too wrapped up in themselves. They lose sight of how silly most of what we do in games really is. What are you doing to avoid that?

Wiebe: I think the important thing in this game is to not take itself too seriously and look strategically at where we can poke fun at other games – including our own titles. We’ve already made fun of a lot of EA-owned products, and I think there’s a lot of good humor in that. We’re gonna carry that on because it’s part of the core humor of the game.

RPS: Is Garden Warfare going to be free-to-play like Plants vs Zombies 2?

Wiebe: We’re not releasing any kind of details on finance models or anything of that nature at this point. That information will probably be coming at a later date.

RPS: OK, but you’re working with EA. They’ve become quite, um, fond of microtransactions recently. Presumably those will be in Garden Warfare as well, right?

Wiebe: We’re not releasing any financial details at this time.

RPS: Right. Well then, can you explain why Plants vs Zombies 2 is coming to mobile first even though the series got its start on PC?

Wiebe: Unfortunately, I’m not qualified to answer that question because I wasn’t working [on it] at that time.

Well, to be fair there are shooter fans and shooter fans. If there’s a saturated shooter market at the moment, it’s the browny grey ultra realistic hoo har brofist codblops market (that’s the technical term). I don’t think this has the same target audience.

I imagine it’ll be more for the TF2 light hearted shooter market, which I don’t think is all that packed at the moment.

Shooter fans have plenty of IPs to have fun with. Tower defense fans have plenty of IPs to play with. Why do we need to be cross pollinating the IPs to give favorites of one set to the other set. It all just seems like artistic inbreeding to me.

If I was forced to make a shooter based on Syndicate, I’d make it a RTS game in which you can ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of your guys, so it could be played as the original Syndicate, as a rah rah shooter, or as a tactical Rainbow Six style shooter. I’d make EA millions and we’d buy the moon, then offer it to the world under a fair free-to-gaze format with microtransactions.

Or: the fact that the Syndicate shooter failed does not neccessarily mean that a Syndicate shooter would always fail, that a game in another genre converted to a shooter will always fail, or that a game being switched to a genre with a different user base will always fail. It may just mean Syndicate was rubbish.

I gave the first one a pleasant five or so hours of my life, but never got around to firing it back up. that said, this game sounds like it could be either extremely fun or really awful. time will tell.

I just asked Steam and it says that my account, mostly by my kids, has put 538 hours into Plants vs. Zombies. I told them a while ago that there was going to be a Plants vs Zombies 2. I haven’t yet found the heart to tell them what it turned out to be.

edit: wait I actually just found out that PvZ2 is something totally different that this turd. Never you mind then. My outrage has turned to antipathy.

At first I thought this but after watching extended gameplay it makes a lot more sense.

It’s a shooter but it’s a four player coop shooter and we’re not exactly knee deep in those other than Call Of Duty Zombies. From a quick check of release lists, unless this gets released we may not get a single coop shooter this year.

“PvZ is based off the Tower Defense genre and I was looking for a way to get these stationary towers in my game but also inject them with some personality; and plants were perfect because people expect plants to stay in one place and thus they made good replacements for the towers.” – George Fan, around 47 minutes

After years of development my prototype subtext-analyser is ready for testing. Let’s fire this thing up and see what happens.

RPS: Why did you decide to do this with Plants vs Zombies, of all series?

Wiebe: Plants vs Zombies made a shit-ton of money despite not being the kind of generic, design-by-numbers shooter we usually churn out. Imagine how much money it could have made if it was the kind of generic, design-by-numbers shooter we usually churn out.

RPS: We’ve seen one level, but how much variety are we looking at? What sorts of map sizes and objectives?

Wiebe: Don’t worry you’ll be able to shoot people in a variety of settings that bear a superficial resemblance to a game you really liked.

RPS: So naturally, there will also be modes where one side plays plants and the other plays zombies, right? I mean, it is called Plants vs Zombies, after all.

Wiebe: Exactly! Is this what it feels like to answer a question directly?

RPS: Will players mainly be controlling the big boss zombies, then?

Wiebe: Hold on, let me write that down!

RPS: How many original PvZ members are also working on Garden Warfare? I mean, I don’t imagine many of them came with a working knowledge of Frostbite 3.

Wiebe: We fired those guys already. People just liked the game becuase it looked cute, right? We may not be able to do creativity ourselves, but at least we can buy the license and make something that looks like it.

RPS: It all looks very tongue-in-cheek and self-aware, though. But, at the same time, I think a lot of people feel like you’re morphing PvZ into some seriousface rah-rah-rah shooter. Do you think that’s shooter fatigue talking? Are you worried about shooter fatigue?

Wiebe: There was lots of shooting in PvZ! There’s the pea-shooter, the triple-pea shooter, the star thing, the butter throwing thing.. Four out of about twenty is almost half, right? We think players will be able to relate to the sunflower more now it’s a ruthless killer with a troubled past. Before it almost looked like it might have been a girl.

RPS: Well, sure. Things do technically shoot other things in PvZ, but that’s not the main verb of the game. In PvZ classic, you’re strategically arraying cheerful green things that do the shooting for you. Garden Warfare is actually about aiming and pulling the trigger. That action, that central goal. That’s what I mean.

Wiebe: I didn’t really understand plants vs zombies but I know people buy shooters and I know that because that’s all we make.

RPS: Yeah, and humor’s obviously a pretty big thing here. The Call of Duty call-out at the start, especially, got some good laughs. But frankly, a lot of EA games seem to get a little too wrapped up in themselves. They lose sight of how silly most of what we do in games really is. What are you doing to avoid that?

Wiebe: You can get away with all kinds of shit if you call it irony. Trust me on this.

RPS: Is Garden Warfare going to be free-to-play like Plants vs Zombies 2?

We explored different design ideas. We put a bunch of possibilities together, like maybe an open-world game where you shoot people, or a straight-up single-player action game where you shoot people. But at the end of the day, we kept coming back to a multiplayer game where you shoot people.

Flashy sales guy: Currently we’re doing market research for Sim Plants. It’ll be a multiplayer garden where gamers actually play together, where their plants live and grown, where the hard computer load is taken care of by our servers! We got this great glass something engine for it.

I have 130+ hours in the original game and own it on both PC and iOS, and I hate this.

Perhaps the most ironic thing is that interview with Popcap just before E3, where they said that EA haven’t influenced them in any way at all. And then BAM, 3rd person military shooter, free to play shoved down it’s throat, and microtransactions coming out of it’s arse.

Really? An MP-only shooter, with four classes on each side? Yeah, what Homu said: I’d be happy to see Popcap’s staff free to return to making good, interesting games. And working for EA does not seem compatible with that.

Jesus christ, I know a lot of people have shooter fatigue, but this comment section reeks of cynicism to me. I played the hell out of PvZ, and I don’t have any problem with this at all. I’m just as sick of modern-day military warfare FPS’s as much as the next guy, but this doesn’t have the bland, “gritty” realism and overly serious tone of CoD or Battlefield. It’s tongue-in-cheek, and looks like a decent amount of fun. Shooting cactus spikes at disco zombies with my friends sounds hilarious enough that I’m fine with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not fond of EA, and I completely understand why people are upset about them taking an IP like PvZ and making a multiplayer shooter out of it. However, given that it’s only a spin-off and they’re still making PvZ 2, I don’t think it’s really that big a deal. The real issue is how the sequel turns out. I’m not holding my breath since it’s on iOS first and will be F2P, but neither of those automatically mean it’s going to be terrible. Much more likely, yes, but not guaranteed.

They stopped challenging “eeeeeverything” since it requires too much effort and have settled with challenging the depth of your pockets instead. Don’t worry, though.
They’re still “EA Games”. “It’s in the game”, after all! Well… part of it is.